Santo, Voo Doo highlight Silver Eagle trade show

These were among the beers highlighted at the Silver Eagle fall trade show. (Ronnie Crocker / Beer, TX)

Silver Eagle Distributors’ fall trade show promoted dozens of beers from its large and growing craft portfolio, including nearly 20 fall seasonals from such favorites as Rahr & Sons and Sierra Nevada.

Let’s focus on two stars from last week’s event, held at the Silver Eagle headquarters on Washington: the replacement Santo from hometown Saint Arnold and the recently arrived Voo Doo stout from Left Coast Brewing Co. of San Clemente, Calif.

Skip Stegmair, district manager for Sabemos Beverages, had four of the Left Coast beers available in 22-ounce bombers, which recently arrived from Southern California at Spec’s and H-E-B and could find their way to Kroger in the future.

Left Coast, which Stegmair said produces 8,000 to 9,000 barrels annually, began operations near the beach in January 2004 and its next expansion will include a six-pack bottling line.

The brewery was represented by the seasonal Board Walk, a pleasant saison strongly influenced by the addition of orange peel; Trestles IPA; Hop Juice, a double IPA that is notably sweet despite being brewed with five hops during the boil and dry-hopped with two more hops because of heavy malt additions; and, my favorite of the bunch, the Voo Doo stout, an aromatic and delicious beer brewed with four roasted malts that, as Stegmair put it, “floats between porter and stout.”

Welcome to Texas, Left Coast. I look forward to spending more time with Voo Doo.

Skip Stegmair, the local representative of Left Coast Brewing Co., with four of the So Cal brewery's beers. They are available on draft (note the cool Voo Doo tap handle) and in 22-ounce bombers. (Ronnie Crocker / Beer, TX)

Also of interest locally was the new version of Santo, which is scheduled to go on sale Oct. 20. Saint Arnold had already begun promoting its so-called “black Kölsch” last month before, as you know, it decided to dump its initial 11,000-gallon batch when the beer failed to scale up to expectations. For the replacement, brewers made two variants and invited the public to vote on which they preferred; one batch was pitched with a Kölsch yeast and the other used the house ale yeast.

Saint Arnold chief Brock Wagner said this week that he’s going with the Kölsch version. You can look for it on draft and in 12-ounce bottles beginning Oct. 20, he said, just a week after the release of the fall seasonal Pumpkinator (the bomber-bottled version of the Divine Reserve 9 imperial pumpkin stout from two years ago).

Brewery rep James Cunningham, pouring samples of the new Santo at the trade show, said the earlier batch wasn’t bad but it was too close in taste to the Fancy Lawnmower.

“Lawnmower is a great beer,” he said. “So was that other version of Santo … but we wanted something completely different.”

Since Silver Eagle distributes 64.2 percent of all beers sold in Houston, it’s good to see the company promoting its craft line with events like this.

Big thanks to communications manager Misty Cornelius for including me on the invite list and to director of specialty and import brands Melanie Broome, who enthused about the size of the craft-beer sales boom.

“We’ve had 35 to 40 percent increases every year since we started focusing on them,” she said.

For more from the trade show, please enjoy the following photo slideshow: